PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 377 



ing in terms of knowledge of that which transcends all 

 knowledge, and admits only of ideal approach. 



The signs of the times, I think, point in this direc- 

 tion. It is, for example, the obvious aim of Mr. 

 Matthew Arnold to protect, amid the wreck of dogma, 

 the poetic basis of religion. And it is to be remem- 

 bered that under the circumstances poetry may be 

 the purest accessible truth. In other influential quar- 

 ters a similar spirit is at work. In a remarkable article 

 published by Professor Knight of St. Andrews in the 

 September number of the ' Nineteenth Century,' amid 

 other free utterances, we have this one : ' If matter is 

 not eternal, its first emergence into being is a miracle 

 beside which all others dwindle into absolute insignifi- 

 cance. But, as has often been pointed out, the process 

 is unthinkable ; the sudden apocalypse of a material 

 world out of blank nonentity cannot be imagined ; l its 

 emergence into order out of chaos when " without form 

 and void " of life, is merely a poetic rendering of the 

 doctrine of its slow evolution.' These are all bold 

 words to be spoken before the moral philosophy class of 

 a Scotch university, while those I have underlined show 

 a remarkable freedom of dealing with the sacred text. 

 They repeat in terser language what I ventured to utter 

 four years ago regarding the Book of Genesis. 'Pro- 

 foundly interesting and indeed pathetic to me are those 

 attempts of the opening mind of man to appease its 

 hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no 

 voice in scientific questions. It is a poem, not a 

 scientific treatise. \ In the former aspect it is for ever 

 beautiful ; in the latter it has been, and it will con- 

 tinue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful.' My agree- 



1 Professor Knight will have to reckon with the English 

 Marriage Service, one of whose Collects begins thus : God, who 

 by thy mighty power hast made all things of nothing.' 



